A new and distinctive hybrid rice designated HR170002 is disclosed.
Rice is an ancient agricultural crop and is today one of the principal food crops of the world. There are two cultivated species of rice: Oryza sativa L., the Asian rice, and Oryza glaberrima Steud, the African rice. The Asian species constitutes virtually all of the world's cultivated rice and is the species grown in the United States. Three major rice producing regions exist in the United States: the Mississippi Delta (Arkansas, Mississippi, northeast Louisiana, southeast Missouri), the Gulf Coast (southwest Louisiana, southeast Texas), and the Central Valleys of California. The Gulf Coast and Mississippi Delta regions mostly use a dry-seeded method of sowing rice whereas; California usually uses a water-seeded method.
Rice in the United States is classified into three primary market types by grain size and shape as: long-grain, medium-grain, and short-grain. Typical U.S. long-grain rice cooks dry and fluffy when steamed or boiled, whereas medium- and short-grain rice cooks moist and sticky. Long-grain cultivars have been traditionally grown in the Southern states.
Although specific breeding objectives vary somewhat in the different regions, increasing yield is a primary objective in all programs. Grain yield of rice is determined by the number of panicles per unit area, the number of fertile florets per panicle, and grain weight per fertile floret. Increases in any or all of these yield components provide a mechanism to obtain higher yields. Heritable variation exists for all of these components, and breeders may directly or indirectly select for increases in any of them.
The development of uniform hybrid rice requires developing homozygous inbred plants, crossing those inbred plants and evaluating those crosses. Pedigree selection, backcross selection, single seed selection, or combinations of these methods are used to develop inbred plants from breeding populations. Those breeding methods combine the genetic background from two or more inbred plants or various other sources of germplasm, such as, breeding pools from which new inbred plants are developed by selfing combined with phenotypic or genotypic selection. The new inbred plants are crossed with other inbred plants and the hybrids created by those crosses are evaluated for commercial potential. Important commercial traits in hybrid rice may include higher yield, resistance to diseases and insects, herbicide tolerance, better stems and roots, tolerance to low temperatures, better agronomic characteristics, and grain quality.
Each breeding program generally includes a periodic, objective evaluation of the efficiency of the breeding procedure. Evaluation criteria vary depending on the goal and objectives, but may include gain from selection per year based on comparisons to an appropriate standard, overall value of the advanced breeding hybrids, and number of successful cultivars produced per unit of input (e.g., per year, per dollar expended, etc.). Promising advanced rice hybrids are thoroughly tested and compared to appropriate standards in environments representative of the commercial target area(s) for at least three or more years. The best hybrids are candidates for new commercial products. These processes, which lead to the final step of marketing and distribution, usually take from 8 to 12 years from the time the first cross is made to develop inbred parent lines, to the subsequent development of improved hybrid rice. Therefore, development of new hybrid rice is a time-consuming process that requires precise forward planning, efficient use of resources, and a minimum of changes in direction.
A most difficult task is the identification of individuals that are genetically superior, because for most traits the true genotypic value is masked by other confounding plant traits or environmental factors. One method of identifying a superior plant is to observe its performance relative to other experimental plants and to a widely grown standard cultivar. If a single observation is inconclusive, replicated observations provide a better estimate of its genetic worth.
Each breeding cycle, the plant breeder selects the germplasm to advance to the next generation. This germplasm is grown under unique and different geographical, climatic and soil conditions and further selections are then made throughout the growing season. Characteristics of the inbred lines which are developed are unpredictable. This unpredictability is because the breeder's selection occurs in unique environments, with no control at the DNA level (using conventional breeding procedures), and with millions of different possible genetic combinations being generated. This unpredictability results in the expenditure of large amounts of research monies to develop superior new rice cultivars.
Testing is aimed at detecting major faults and establishing the level of superiority or improvement over current cultivars. In addition to showing superior performance, there must be a demand for a new cultivar that is compatible with industry standards or which creates a new market. The introduction of a new cultivar may incur additional costs to the seed producer, the grower, processor and consumer; for special advertising and marketing, altered seed and commercial production practices, and new product utilization. The testing preceding release of a new cultivar takes into consideration research and development costs as well as technical superiority of the final cultivar. For seed-propagated cultivars, it is desirable to produce seed easily and economically.
Rice, Oryza sativa L., is an important and valuable field crop. Thus, a continuing goal of rice breeders is to develop stable, high yielding rice cultivars that are agronomically sound. The reasons for this goal are to maximize the amount of grain produced on the land used and to supply food for both animals and humans. To accomplish this goal, the rice breeder must select and develop rice plants that have the traits that result in superior cultivars.